We’re all aware of the social juggernaut that is the gay-rights movement. Anyone who refuses to stand up (or come out) and support same-sex marriage, public funding for gender reassignment operations, punitive actions against the Boy Scouts and the inclusion of gay-friendly provisions in immigration legislation is a bigot.

But just because society is allegedly evolving to the point where everyone whose knuckles don’t scrape the ground thinks gender distinctions are irrelevant and Heather deserves two (or more) daddies, this does not mean that we can twist history to our liking.

While it took some courage to admit to the world that he was sexually attracted to men, Jason Collins is no more or less a hero than Tim Tebow, the football player who took a few shots because he believed in God and wasn’t afraid to pray in public.

Jackie Robinson is another story altogether. Anyone who has seen the recent biopic “42” has some idea of what the great Dodger was forced to endure as the man who single-handedly integrated American’s national pastime. As a Philadelphian who was not fully aware of the treatment he received at the hands of our hometown club, I was horrified to hear the words that, in other times, were launched as easily and expertly as a fly ball out of Shibe Park.

And of course, it wasn’t just words. Robinson was a social pariah among his own teammates, unable to ride on the same buses or lodge in the same hotels as his less-talented colleagues. Beyond the world of baseball, he would not have been able to walk down a southern street without having to worry about his personal safety. He was a black man at a time when the color of your skin put you at risk for harassment, or much worse. He couldn’t hide it, and no one really cared about the content of his character.

Regardless of how much we try to analogize his ordeal to that of Jason Collins, it doesn’t compute. While there is no question that being gay in professional sports is not an idyllic experience, it is hardly the purgatory that Jackie Robinson suffered every day of his major-league life. This is particularly so in the 21st Century, where a guy like Tebow is more likely to be ridiculed for his genuflections than a sexually emancipated athlete with the support of presidents and film stars.

No one would dare treat Collins with anything other than respect, even in the sweaty locker rooms that are the temple of his own faith. We have speech codes, explicit or implicit, that forbid us from using the word “gay” in a pejorative manner.

If I were an African-American watching the Collins affair, I’d be annoyed beyond belief at the suggestion that what my ancestors suffered was equal to the deprivation of “marriage equality.”

There is nothing wrong with supporting human dignity. It is central to our secular democratic prayer “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But we do ourselves a great disservice when we try to equalize all struggles and histories simply because it fits our evolving sense of who we should be.

Jason Collins is, indeed, a brave man. But he’s no Jackie Robinson.

Christine M. Flowers (cflowers1961@gmail.com) is a lawyer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.